Does My Dog Understand Time, and Do They Miss Me?
Our dogs often seem to be psychic, understanding many things that we do or say even though they don’t possess the capacity for language. For example, you can say a simple command and point at an object, and your dog may retrieve it for you. Dogs are also great at even more complex tasks depending on how well you train them.
Dogs are definitely smart animals, but there are limits to their abilities… or are there?
Many dog owners wonder whether their canine companions can understand time. Lots of dogs, for example, can predict when it’s time to eat, when their owners will come home, and may even act differently depending on how long their owners are away from the house. How can this be, and do dogs really understand time like they seem to be able to?
To get to the bottom of this question, we’ll dive deeper into how a time sense works in humans, how it might work in dogs, and the role that smell plays in dogs’ predictive capabilities.
The Connection Between Memory and Time
For humans, dogs, and practically all other creatures, a sense of time is intrinsically connected to the sense of memory. This makes sense when you think about it; if you don’t have any memories, you won’t be able to compare your current experience to the experiences you had before, let alone make predictions about the future.
In humans, memory is categorized into two types: implicit or unconscious memory and explicit or conscious memory. Implicit memories are usually those that your brain uses automatically, and these memories often influence instinctual actions. For example, once you learn how to ride a bike, your brain will use implicit memory so that you know how to ride that bike again and again without having to relearn the skill.
Explicit memory, on the other hand, is any memory you call up consciously. It includes your conscious knowledge and experiences, like something you learned at school or what you did last week.
Both types of memory combined help us form a sense of time. We can use the information stored in the memories to judge the past experiences against our current experiences and to make educated guesses about what the future will be like.
Memory and Time for Dogs
Dogs (and most other mammals, for that matter) are known to have implicit or unconscious memory at minimum. For example, the Pavlovian training method often used for dogs and other animals relies on implicit memory to work.
Even though your dog may not think about it, training them to expect food and salivate each time you ring a bell happens automatically, indicating that implicit memory is a part of them. The question, therefore, is whether dogs have explicit memory to help them form a sense of time.
Unfortunately, scientists don’t fully know whether dogs have memories that could truly be classified as “explicit” or “conscious.” However, other animals, such as some birds, have demonstrated a capacity for explicit memory, particularly when they solve problems or challenges.
Instead, many scientists believe that dogs have something called episodic memory. In a nutshell, episodic memory involves remembering specific events or circumstances in your life. It’s easy to see dogs demonstrate this memory capacity in their everyday activities.
Once they meet a person, for example, dogs will form a conclusion or perception about that person. If they meet the person again, their behavior will be influenced by what they remember from their first encounter or “episode.”
Furthermore, dogs demonstrate an ability to alter their behavior based on past experience, provided the experience was memorable. Some dogs, for instance, learn not to enjoy going to the vet office after a single bad experience, so they act cowardly or nervous each time they go afterward.
- Bottom line: dogs likely have enough memory capacity to perceive time. But that doesn’t fully explain how dogs perceive time and what it really means for their actions.
How Do Dogs Perceive Time Length?
A famous study published in 2011 found that the subject dogs in the experiment demonstrated more intense physical responses and separation anxiety the longer they were separated from their owners. In other words, the longer a dog’s owner leaves them, the more excited they will be when the owner returns.
During the experiment, dogs that were left alone for more than two hours demonstrated significantly more excitement when their owners came back compared to dogs that were only left alone for 15 minutes or so. For example, they barked more, wagged their tails, and danced around more excitedly.
This clearly showed that the length of time the dogs were left alone affected their responses.
This indicates that dogs do have the ability to distinguish between “longer” and “shorter” periods of time. Of course, scientists aren’t sure just how acute this sense is—we do know that dogs can’t distinguish between a second, a minute, and an hour, for example. However, the above experiment and others like it do show that dogs know the difference between something taking a little bit of time and something taking a lot of time.
So, the next time you head out and tell your dog, “I’ll be back in 15 minutes”, remember that they won’t be able to tell what that means, even if you feel like you have to say it! However, your dog will be able to pick up from context clues (and from episodic memory) that you’ll be gone only for a little while, so they may not feel very upset at your temporary departure.
Smell and Dog Time
Interestingly, there’s also some scientific evidence to indicate that dogs primarily use their sense of smell to tell time. How?
It all boils down to just how sensitive dogs’ sense of smell really is. For context, your dog’s nose is approximately 100 million times more sensitive than your own. In fact, dogs can smell heat, specifically thermal radiation, with the infrared sensor in their nose. In the wild, wolves use this to detect the body heat from their mammalian prey. This helps to explain how dogs with impaired sight or hearing can still hunt effectively if they have experience.
So, what does this have to do with time? In a nutshell, dogs can smell the temperature changes in the ambient air as the day progresses. Think about it; when you wake up in the morning, the air is cool and not very humid as the moisture has turned to dew. Your dog can smell this temperature and, combined with clues like the sunlight not being very intense, tell that it is morning.
Similarly, your dog can tell how time passes from morning into the afternoon as the air temperature rises and as humidity increases. In this way, dogs likely mark the passage of a typical day by smelling how the environment around them changes rather than by exclusively looking at the light level like we humans might.
Does Your Dog Miss You?
It’s all well and good that dogs can tell time, but does it mean that your dog misses you when you leave?
As the above 2011 experiment demonstrated: yes! Your dog absolutely misses you whenever you leave, whether it’s for five minutes or for five hours. However, there is evidence to suggest that the length of time you are gone affects just how desperate your dog is for your return.
Furthermore, the circumstances of your departure – and whether you have left under similar circumstances before – can impact whether your dog misses you a lot or just a little bit. For example, if your dog expects to play and you leave to run an errand instead, they might be a little more disappointed than if you left in the middle of the afternoon nap.
No matter what, rest assured that your canine companion does miss you any time you leave the house for an adventure without them.
Time After Time
Dogs possess keen senses of smell far beyond what we can imagine. While they may not be able to recall conscious memory quite as accurately as humans, they do possess enough memory capacity to form a mental timeline. Dogs can recall past events, use that information to influence their future decisions, and even remember specific episodes.
So while your dog may not be able to tell you what time it is, they can tell the passage of time reasonably accurately. No matter what, your dog will be so happy to see you when you return!
Sources:
Implicit and Explicit Memory | Simply Psychology
Dogs May Possess a Type of Memory Once Considered ‘Uniquely Human’ | Smithsonian Magazine
The effect of time left alone at home on dog welfare | Science Direct
New sense discovered in dog noses: the ability to detect heat | Sciencemag.org
